


Time Bomb

by Bullfinch



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-17
Packaged: 2018-08-09 06:42:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7790848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shiro knows he should have removed the arm a long time ago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Bomb

**Author's Note:**

> Have a Baby's First Voltron Fic. Written as gen but go ahead and read as pre-Sheith if you're into that.
> 
> Based on [an interview](http://ofwolvesandshatteredshields.tumblr.com/post/148474487787/lady-vega-in-which-the-spectacular-josh-keaton%22) with Josh Keaton. (Not required listening but I wanted to give credit where it's due.)

There are a hundred images of the witch forested thickly around him. They open their mouths and laugh, and Shiro slices one to smoke with his radiant hand, destroys another and another. She could stop him, of course. They never knew her real name when he fought in the arena—the fighters just called her _the witch_ so that’s the only name he has for her. She laughs at him from all sides and he cuts her down again and again and again without avail. He’s breathing harshly, the gel-like interior of his suit molding around his heaving chest. She could stop him but she’s letting him exhaust himself instead. It’s all right. He doesn’t need to kill her. Just needs to stay alive until one of the others shows up to—

His gut turns. Wait. What if—

_“Shiro!”_

Keith.

Shiro spins. Keith is cutting down more of the witch’s ghosts, his bright blade banishing them into nothingness. He advances unimpeded. Shiro’s breath stops in his throat. Around him the witch is smiling. “Keith!” he shouts. “Don’t! Get out of—”

The words lost in the crackle of energy, truncated when the witch’s spell slams into his back and sends him skidding across the floor. He curls up, gasping, but only for a moment before he pushes himself up to his knees— _no time,_ Keith can’t be here, not now. But Keith is there right in front of him, pulling him to his feet. “Shiro, we gotta get— _uh.”_

Shiro flinches.

The arm is metal and the sensation isn’t quite the same as it would be on skin; but he’s familiar with it, the warmth, the soft structures pulsing gently against him, the liquid trickling down the silver casing and dripping off of his elbow. Keith drops his bayard and reaches down to where Shiro’s arm is embedded in his chest.

“No,” Shiro whispers. “No. Keith—“

“Why did you—“ Keith looks up, confused, afraid. His breaths are shallow. “Why did you do that? Shiro?”

“I didn’t mean to! She can control my arm, I didn’t—Keith, Keith, no—“ Shiro helps lower Keith to his knees.

“Hurts—“ His face creases in pain, and he grabs Shiro’s shoulder. “Hurts, it—please don’t—“

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

Shiro feels the mechanical heat in his arm a split-second before it shoots forward, punching further through Keith’s chest. Keith chokes back a whimper of agony, curling into Shiro. “Shiro, please don’t, please don’t move it any more—“

Blood fountains from the jagged hole in his suit, cascading down the chestplate and onto the floor. He’s dying. He’s going to die. Shiro holds him still and looks up, shouting in desperation at the witch—all of them, all of the purple-cloaked figures who surround him. “Please, you have to help him! Just save his life, I’ll do anything you want!”

“You already have.” Her voice is everywhere, reverberating off the walls of the hangar, directionless like that of some unknown deity. “You fought for me. You killed for me. You’ve just done it again. You have nothing left that I want.”

“Shiro,” Keith whispers. “It’s okay. I know it’s not your fault.”

Then he retches, and dark blood bursts from his lips and spills onto Shiro’s front. Shiro cups his face. “Keith, you’re gonna be okay, all right? I’ll—I’ll figure something out, I’ll find a way—“

But Keith’s eyes are already drifting closed. The witch’s countless voices echo around him. “You have nothing,” she says. “You have nothing, Champion.”

“Keith.” Shiro’s mind is scattered, and he scrambles for purchase. “Keith, stay with me. Come on.”

There’s no response. Keith sags, supported only by the arm through his chest; he lists gently forward. A sob bursts out of Shiro’s throat, and he struggles to contain the next one. “Keith, you have to stay with me. You have to.”

Keith’s eyes are closed, his chin stained with blood. The pulsing against Shiro’s arm slows to a stop. The witch surrounds them in every direction, as countless as the stars, laughing and laughing and laughing.

——

It’s dark.

Something binds his arm to his side. He rolls over and gropes reflexively with the other, drags the wastebin to the edge of the bed and dry-heaves once, twice, three times. His rasping breaths are deafening in his ears.

It’s dark.

This isn’t the hangar. This is his bedroom. Which means Keith’s not dead. The pulse of relief is so strong it makes his limbs weak and his stomach even sicker. Shiro spits sour saliva into the wastebin and crumples the covers in his hand. The other arm, the Galra arm, is still bound—oh. His sheets, twisted up around it.

No time to lie here. It’s not over.

He throws the sheets off of him and stands—woozy, stumbling, makes his way to the drawers and finds a pair of sweatpants, tugs them up over his hips. Sweat runs down the dip of his spine and collects in the waistband. Out the door. Glowing seams in serene blue light his way down the corridor. He leans on the wall for support, the floor cold on his bare feet, the conditioned air not much better on his clammy skin. The faint _thrum_ of the ship is there as always, a background to his quiet footsteps. He still feels fragile, and now and then he has to press a hand to his mouth and hold back another retch.

Still, he goes quickly. Doesn’t know why he’s waited so long. He’s been putting the other paladins in danger.

When he enters the workshop there’s the high sound of some tool already whirring near the far wall—Keith, bent over some piece of his suit, frowning in concentration. He glances up at Shiro’s entrance. “Oh, hey.”

“Hi,” Shiro replies, distracted, rummaging through a drawer. Shouldn’t be that hard to find, there are at least a few lying around—

“What are you looking for?”

“Boltzmann blade.” He shoves the drawer shut and opens the next.

“Over there.”

Shiro looks up. Keith points at the central table, where one of Hunk’s projects is spread out in a dozen pieces. But the Boltzmann blade is there and Shiro snatches it up, flicks the switch. A thin whine as the handle vibrates ever so slightly against his palm, and the blade begins to glow bright yellow-white. He lifts the robotic arm, inspecting it. Where should he cut? There’s the edge where the metal is woven somehow into his skin—the tech is way more advanced than anything he saw on Earth—but that might not be the end of it. They might have grafted it into the bone. But how high?

“Hey, Shiro, are you okay?”

“Yeah, just give me a second.” He drags his thumb up the sweaty skin of his upper arm, stopping at the bend of his shoulder. That should be good enough. If it isn’t, he can just turn the knife off and dig out the rest with the dead blade.

“Uh—what are you doing?”

“I need to get this off.” He exhales, steeling himself, and presses the knife into his shoulder.

_“Shiro!”_

A dozen metallic clangs as Keith vaults the middle table and sends the pieces of Hunk’s project skidding off the edges. Shiro’s attention is drawn rapidly away from that to the pain in his shoulder—a terrible burning, one that lessens when Keith grabs his wrist and yanks the knife from the wound.

Shiro doesn’t fight back because the knife is still on, but he keeps holding onto it. “Keith, I need to do this.” He tries to reinforce his voice with the steady command he uses to direct their training. The effect is ruined by how much it shakes. “Please let me go.”

Keith only tightens his grip and tries to pull the blade further out from Shiro. “What are you _doing?!”_

“Keith, I’m dangerous! To you and everyone else on this ship!” Shiro is trying not to shout but what’s to say it won’t happen right now? What’s to say the witch didn’t program some latent command in him—once he’s alone with an ally, he’s to murder them with this Galra arm? “I need to get it off, _now!”_

“Listen, please, just—“ Keith’s eyes flick to the blade, back to Shiro’s face. “Why don’t you turn the knife off and tell me what’s going on?”

His discomfort with the situation is obvious and Shiro knows why—because _he’s_ usually the one who calms things down, takes control, gets everyone’s feet back under them again. He knows how he must look now to Keith. Who’s afraid—that much is obvious too, Keith’s not much for hiding what he feels and isn’t good at it anyway—and the reflex pings in the back of Shiro’s mind, _he needs help so I should help him._

So he rolls his thumb and the high whine of the Boltzmann blade fades, and he relaxes his grip and Keith takes the thing and pockets it, letting out a long breath. “Okay.”

Shiro pulls the arm in to his chest, feels the synthetic muscle contracting inside the metal casing. He holds it absently. It’s a time bomb.

“Look…how about we sit down?” Keith gestures at the bench that lines the front wall.

Okay.

Shiro goes and sits.

The cushions are soft and smudged a bit with bluish oil. Keith comes over with a rag that’s also smudged with bluish oil. He finds a clean spot and presses it to the cut on Shiro’s shoulder. “Here,” he mumbles.

The cut isn’t bleeding much. The knife burned the edges. But it is oozing, so Shiro takes the rag and holds it. “Thanks.”

Keith sits next to him. For a moment he doesn’t say anything, and Shiro almost thinks (prays) he’s going to let it go; but then he ventures the question. “So…is there a reason you woke up in the middle of the night and decided to go chop your arm off?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says softly. “It’s dangerous.”

“To the Galra,” Keith replies. “Not to us. It’s _your_ arm.”

“No it’s not. It’s hers. The witch. She could—“ His throat tightens. “She can control it.”

“She—“ Keith breaks off and says nothing for a moment. “Oh.”

When Shiro starts talking it’s as if the words themselves are climbing out of him of their own will, caged creatures begging to be known. “After I won a few fights they started throwing prisoners at me. People who didn’t know how to fight. They just wanted to stay alive like I did.” He hasn’t told anyone this yet. Not for weeks, since the memories first returned to him. “I didn’t want to kill them. The first time I refused, and the second. The—“ He flinches, remembering the blunt, liquid impact. “The Galra killed them instead.” _They made me pay for it._ He doesn’t tell Keith that. “And then one day they dragged me out of my cell and drugged me with something and when I woke up my—my arm was gone and I had this instead.” That damaged him, he thinks, realizing that even his body wasn’t his own anymore but belonged to them and they could change it to fit their desires. A violative act. He never got any say or even a warning. Just a knockout drug and then his arm got sawn off in his sleep.

He uncurls his hand, the metal plates sliding smoothly over each other. “They put me in the arena again even though I was still in pain. Another prisoner. I refused to kill them. And then…the arm started moving by itself.“ Shiro discovers he really doesn’t want to think about this—has shied away from it whenever the memory threatened to break the surface before, but he’s already talking and Keith deserves to know. “I just…I killed them. I put my arm through their chest. They weren’t human, their blood was sort of dark green. It was all over me. I didn’t…I didn’t understand.”

Keith reaches out and rests a hand on Shiro’s metal forearm. “Shiro, I’m sorry.”

He jerks away. “You shouldn’t touch me.”

“But you’re not—“

“It was you this time,” Shiro interrupts. “I killed you.”

Keith stares for a second, mystified; then he nods and sits back. “You had a dream about it. That’s why you’re here in the middle of the night.”

Shiro absently thumbs the soft hem of the rag. “It felt pretty real.”

“Well, it wasn’t.” Keith picks up Shiro’s metal hand and plants it on his own chest. “See? I’m still here.”

Shiro rests his palm there a moment—but he keeps seeing the blood flowing down Keith’s white breastplate, feeling the phantom sensation of still-living organs pulsing around his forearm. He yanks his arm back. “Keith, _don’t.”_

“Shiro, nothing’s happening! You’re not gonna hurt me!”

“You don’t know that!” He realizes he’s shouting but can’t stop himself. “What if there’s a—a command program that’ll activate it under the right conditions? Or what if she learns to control it from far away?”

Keith starts to reply but bites it back, and for a moment the only sound in the still workshop is the ship humming serenely in the background. Shiro pulls the metal arm into his chest, curling in on it like it’s a grenade.

“You’re really afraid,” Keith says. “Of hurting us.”

“You don’t understand,” Shiro says quietly. “She wasn’t moving me like a puppet. It was _my arm._ I felt the muscle contract, the tendons tightening, I felt the joints bend. Like _I_ was moving it. And I couldn’t—I knew I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t stop myself. If we come up against her—if the rest of you are, there, I don’t—“

“Hey.” Keith rests a hand clumsily on Shiro’s shoulder; their fingers collide over the rag. “We’ll deal with it. Okay? We’ll get you out of there. Maybe Pidge can take a look at it sometime soon and see if they can make sure only you can control it. You have friends here, okay? You don’t have to do everything by yourself.”

Shiro stares at his bare feet. “What if it happens anyway?” he murmurs.

Keith exhales. “Well, then it happens. We all know the risks of doing what we do. No one’s gonna blame you.”

_“Shiro,” Keith whispers. “It’s okay. I know it’s not your fault.” Then he retches, and dark blood bursts from his lips and spills onto Shiro’s front—_

“That’s not good enough,” Shiro snaps—curses himself, attenuates his tone. “I can’t let that happen. I can’t.” He balls up the rag and tosses it at the work table.

Keith leans in to inspect the wound, gently manipulates the burned edges. “Fine, but I’m still not letting you hack off your arm.”

Shiro rubs his eyes. His head is starting to clear at long last; the hangar is getting further away, and he’s slowly realizing that Keith isn’t going to die, at least not right now, not here in the workshop with the soft blue lights glowing above him in the dark and the filtered air cycling over his sweaty skin. He finds himself kind of embarrassed now. What was he thinking, coming here to amputate his own arm with a Boltzmann blade in the middle of the night?

“Hey, you want to crash in my room?”

Shiro looks up.

Keith’s hand still rests at Shiro’s shoulder. “You had a nightmare, right? Maybe if you start thrashing around I can wake you up.”

His instincts rail against it—he’s their leader, he’s supposed to be there for them to lean on, not the other way around. But it’s a terrible feeling to be afraid of himself and it makes him tired all the time and he doesn’t want to do this alone. “Yeah.” He shifts, trying to dislodge the shame creeping up over his shoulders. “That sounds fine.”

“Good.” Keith stands and stretches, rising up on tiptoes, his back arching. “Let’s go. Coran’ll be waking us up in a couple of hours.”

Shiro pushes himself to his feet. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “For—for all of this.”

“Shiro, you don’t have to apologize.” Keith swipes the door open. “But you gotta promise me you’re not gonna do that again. If I wasn’t here you would’ve—“ He breaks off and sighs. “Just don’t, okay?”

 _You have friends here. You don’t have to do everything by yourself._ Something he’d convinced himself to forget. (With reluctance, because the paladins were the first humans he’d met in months whom he didn’t end up killing later on. But leading them is rewarding too.)

Keith raises an eyebrow. “Well?”

Shiro pushes his bangs back out of his face. “Yeah, I promise.”

Keith watches Shiro a moment more; then he turns and starts walking. Shiro follows him through the castle’s glowing halls.


End file.
